


Human Women

by orange_crushed



Series: The Masterverse [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Crack, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I will kill you</i>, he thinks experimentally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Women

She's shoving toast into his mouth and it tastes good, tastes great, in fact; he still wants to kill her about it.

A lot.

"You can chew," she says, rather coldly, "I know he's set the dampening field so that you can." He hums agreement. For her troubles, he tries to bite her hand. "Pig, pig, pig," she repeats, and dabs the butter from the edge of his mouth with his own tie. He's going to smell like toast for days. "This is a therapy day," she says, mock-cheerily, "so you ought to look spiffy."

 _I hate you_ , he thinks, as hard as he can, hoping her nose will start to bleed or she'll convulse or some other entertaining thing. Instead, she stands up and he gets a brief glimpse of thigh from beneath the jean skirt. Ah, well.

"Hungry ?" asks a sympathetic masculine voice from the doorway; if he could, the Master would roll his eyes back into his skull and play dead. Or actually die. That would be- swell.

"Mastery," she sighs in response, and leaves.

The hold's released, just a notch; he folds his arms across his chest and clears his throat. In front of him, the Doctor pulls up an old-fashioned desk chair and sits his horrible, skinny, smug ass down on it.

"Ready to talk ?"

"I'd shag Rose before I killed her," he says, thoughtfully. "No sense in letting all _that_ ," he waves a hand airily, in the shape of a human bottom, "go to waste."

Therapy is brief, that day.

 

 

He'd think this was eternity, except she hasn't yet aged. Here are the drums, the drums, still; he wishes they'd be good for something and just fucking _drown her out_. Blah blah blah blah. Human women. He's cursed.

 _Fuck_.

"-said you liked oranges," she continues, though he wasn't listening. She huffs out an irritated little breath. "I don't much care what a lunatic murderer like yourself enjoys for breakfast, but there you go. _He_ cares." He thinks about dropping her into a star. Yay. She'd make ridiculous faces as she died. It cheers him up, a little.

His own voice is tied up in silence; limbs stilled and depressingly unresponsive- he's been shut off in here, switch flipped. Can't hear anything but her voice, her horrible voice; that and the sound of her breasts rubbing against the material of her blouse. Ah, blondes. She catches him looking; or, as close as he can manage to movement. Maybe his eyeballs have managed to come loose. "Rude," she snaps; and drops the orange onto his lap. Shuts the door.

The light goes out.

 _I hate oranges_ , he thinks.

 

 

"You need to stop talking rude about me," she says, pointing at his forehead, "even up there. Maybe I can't hear it, but I know you're thinking it." He thought a particularly horrifying string of words forcefully at her and she frowned. "You're doing it again."

She's sitting beside him, peeling an apple. For herself, the cow. "Maybe it's pointless. Maybe you'd like to live out the rest of eternity as an angry rag doll in a closet. I don't fancy buttering your toast for the next twenty years." She turns her gaze on him. "Maybe you want to be kept. Maybe it's easier. You failed. So now you can just blame him for ruining it, and not think of yourself as a great, stinking failure."

He lied. No shagging for this one: just killing. Obviously unable to read his mind, she continues. "There's only two of you. I can just imagine, me and the last human. Even if he was a git, I'd still need someone to talk to. About human things. It's got to be the same for you, no matter how pathetic and nasty you are."

He tries desperately to drool, and repulse her so much that he'll be left alone. It's useless. "Am I boring you, your majesty ?"

 _This is hell_ , he thinks. She looks at him for a while, with startling focus.

"No." She stands up, pops the last of the apple into her mouth, and tucks the knife back in a pocket. "This isn't hell." He is startled enough to stare up at her. "You're all wrong in your geography. I understand why you hate it. Because, this ? Is heaven. You're just a devil."

Well, point taken.

 

 

He figures it out, quickly enough. The Doctor's being careful. For _her_. The hold, the lockdown chamber, the casually controlled discussions and attempts at familiarity that only serve to ratchet up the Doctor's blood pressure. If it were the two of them, he'd have risked it; there'd be a hell of a lot more fighting and probably some fires set in the console room. He's pretty sure he would have gotten free by now. The Doctor is stupid that way.

"You think I'll hurt her," he drawls, legs crossed neatly at the ankles. His suit's beginning to smell. "I just want steal your ship; not the accessories, thanks. I won't stop to swat the bug."

"Swat the- right." The Doctor grips the edge of the chair and smiles, coldly. "How humane."

"Humane, human, that's your kink." He chuckles. "Oh, wait. Mine too. This is great, we're sharing."

"Will you get over this ?" the other man asks, suddenly. "Will you ? Because I'm old, and tired. There are better ways to spend your life. Or do you have another thousand years of bastard in there ?"

"Two thousand," he says; but it feels a lie. It's more like three.

 

 

He overhears their conversation in the hall; which of course means that he's _meant_ to hear it, that the Doctor has tuned him in like a radio receiver. Why he couldn't add some match scores is beyond knowing.

"-can't stay like this," she's saying, clearly irritated and slightly self-righteous. That's a bit surprising. The Doctor generally has the market cornered on self-righteous. "It's inhusomething. It's wrong. Won't his legs atrophy ?"

"That's-" he can almost feel the Doctor's placid amusement with her concern. "Not really. If he were human, sure. You do know what he's done," the Doctor continues, not argumentatively, just probing her for a response. "What he's capable of. You know you'll have to be on your guard."

"I know."

"Alright, then." The connection is shut off, hurriedly. He suspects the idiots in the hall may, at this moment, be kissing. He wishes for the power to retch. It doesn't come.

The door opens after a long pause and the Doctor, rumpled and pleased with himself, extends a hand to him. "That's just so you know: she says you go back in the box, you go back in the box. I want you to appreciate that." The Doctor twitches his hand a little, impatiently. The Master finds he can reach up to take it; so he kicks the other man in the kneecap instead.

"I'm taking a bath," he says immediately, and strides into the hall; his legs only jelly under him for an instant, but they hold. Oddly, nobody follows. He walks down the hall towards the bathroom, passes it, banks a sharp left into the console room and throws a lever, cackling with glee.

Nothing happens.

"Biological imprint required," the Doctor says, leaning against the railing. "The latest thing. Do you like it ?" By way of an answer, the Master runs at the TARDIS doors, opening them and finding himself a million light-years above a starry sweep, a puddle in the blackness of space. "We're parked in the void," the Doctor adds, cheerfully. "Mind the gap."

"I liked you better in the wheelchair," he snaps. He did. All that rolling. Like a toy train.

"I know," the Doctor shrugs.

 

 

For reasons which could only be described as lunancy and self-punishment, he starts taking tea with Rose Tyler. She does not seem interested in reforming him, only getting him to shut up between commercials.

He held her hostage with a butter knife, the first time; it was a tense moment, the Doctor alternately pleading and threatening, Rose kicking him in the shins and dumping a pot of cream over his head when she wiggled away. His defense at the time had been _it was worth a shot_.

"Pass the sugar," he says, now, and she does.

"We get stations other than Nickelodeon," she murmurs, over her magazine. "You know, like for grownups ?" The little animated cats on the screen explode into green goo, slopping on an old lady's face; he laughs.

"This is fine." He stares at her and she flips the page. _I will kill you_ , he thinks experimentally. _Kill you kill you kill you and dump cream on your head_.

 _I heard that_ , the Doctor thinks in response, snottily, from the console room. _Don't be an ass_.

 _Go fu_ -

"I can tell you're thinking to him, with your mouth all screwed up like that," Rose says, dunking her last biscuit into her tea. He makes a face. "Tell him we're out of crackers, while you're at it."

 _What ?_ he feels the Doctor prod.

 _I hate you and I wish you'd burned to a crisp with all the rest of our people and I hope I get the chance to set you on fire myself one day, soon_ , the Master thinks, pointedly. _Also, we're out of crackers_.

The stunned mental silence is definitely worth the price of admission.

 

 

They take him planetside, like an experiment; before that they spend a half-hour conferencing next to the viewscreens, arguing quietly about quarries and beaches and No-Master policies at certain better-known interdimensional restaurants. Ha, he remembers _that_. Something to do with alcohol and human women, probably; or maybe it was the time with that cluster bomb and the waiter's uniform.

"Oh, this is nice," he says, staring at the ocean and the tiny village beyond with a sour note in his voice. "A great big bucket next to some shacks. You are a classy pair."

"There's probably something here we can feed him to," Rose says, looking at the Doctor hopefully.

"Not a thing."

"Pessimist," Rose frowns, and stomps down the hill.

After that, it's laughably simple to guide them into life-threatening danger. He drops a suggestion to just one bright fellow in overalls; one thing leads to another and she's accused of witchcraft and dragged away by a party of crazed, chanting townfolk. The Doctor's attempts to free her get him carted off to jail; and the Master is left to shop leisurely and have a delightful lunch served by brunettes. Nice brunettes.

"Seriously, that was easy," he tells one of them, the one perched on his lap. "I mean, too easy. It's almost depressing. I think a nice spin around the arms-trading district of the next system will cheer me right up. What do you think ?"

"I think," Rose says, from behind him, "that this is going to be funny later. To me. When I tell the story at parties."

She's in a lovely gown, her hair all done up, with a willow wand in her right hand. She's been forcefully given a really good bath- he can smell it. "What do you know," she smirks. "They think witchcraft is just _awesome_ on this planet." She glances down at her slippers, which are quite obviously pure gold. "I think I get to keep these."

He runs. Rose Tyler, the new goddess of Penraxis-Bucellis, has a posse rounded up; he is ridden back to town in an ox-cart.

 

 

The next planet, something _stranger_ happens.

She's dangling off a cliff face, her rounded pink nails scrabbling for purchase against some kind of alien shale; it keeps snapping off in her hands and causing her to make these amazing little squeals. He's sitting back on his heels, watching it. Far below, on the floor of the gorge, the Doctor is tearing about and pointing his useless screwdriver up, uselessly; all that and screaming in Gallifreyan: _grab her hand you fucking fucking fuck fucker_.

It's quite funny.

"Hmm," the Master says. Rose, to her credit, looks up from her bleeding fingertips and scowls at him. "I'm not good, you know." She scoffs at him, at _him_ , like he's a gnat on her lower lip.

"So ?" she asks, dismissively; spitting out a pebble.

He pulls her up.

 

 

"I don't like you," he says, bottom against the console, nonchalant, still trying to quietly fiddle with knobs and buttons until something obeys him; the Doctor watches him placidly from the jump seat, like a hyper-intelligent cow. "I never liked you. In school you were always _this is this_ and _that is that_ and going on and on about how we should save the little people, not just mindwipe them and sort it out our-brilliant-selves. You were a drag."

"I've heard that."

"You're even worse now. I thought you were an ass then, and you were, but you've really grown into it. Hit your stride. That trick with the glowing lights ? I really, really don't like you." He stops, tries to contain it. "But I think I might like _her_."

The Doctor chokes a little.

"Excuse me ?"

"Not _like_ like," he continues, ignoring the sputtering sounds, "it's just hormones. Complacency. Stockholm Syndrome. Over-identification. I've been thinking about what I'll do with her, after I age you. Or turn you into a dog. A nice terrier, you look it. Or kill you. Why plan ahead ? I'm sure something good will come to me." He examines his nails. "I think I'll keep her. I could shrink her. Put her in a snowglobe and shake it when she's rude. Oh, I like that."

"I'm not going to let that happen," the Doctor says, mildly. The Master stares at him.

"Let ?" he scowls. " _Let_ ? Oh, well, by-your-leave, my lady. What a twat you are." He sits cross-legged against the railing, wishing for a good-sized rock to throw, or something interesting to do. "Where did you find the little tart, anyway ?"

"Parallel world," the Doctor says; he says it so quietly though, through his teeth, that the Master very nearly hears _schmerallel furled_.

"What ?" His eyes widen. "Oh, you bastard. Parallel world. You _didn't_."

"Did," the Doctor retorts.

"You used _my_ alterations, didn't you ? You did," he goes on, pointing an accusing finger, "and I had to hear the whole lecture about messing with time and paradoxes and dimensional fabrics and the destiny of certain round fleshy species and _responsibility_ ; and then you stole my ideas for a _shag_." The Doctor's ears redden, and he crosses his narrow arms. _Bastard_ , the Master thinks. "Bastard !" he says.

"I was careful to-" the Doctor begins, awkwardly; luckily for him, at that moment, they crash-land.

 

 

"I'm still evil," the Master says, irritably, as he defends himself and Rose from a clump of knee-high spidery aliens with only a table-leg.

"Obviously," she replies, watching him land a terrific right cross on a particularly small, helpless-looking little spider-thing. He giggles and hits another. "Utterly."

"HOLD THIS," the Doctor yells. He's been yelling since they landed, and it doesn't look to be letting up soon. "EVERYTHING IS COUNTING ON YOU, ROSE." She turns an adoring glance on him, and holds on to the transdimensional- oh, fuck it. He wasn't listening. The Master continues to beat at the oncoming spiders with something like glee.

There is a puff of smoke and the creatures shrug back into their own time, grumbling.

"Is it always like this ?" he asks. He's panting from the exertion and grinning. He regards his makeshift club with pride. "I go in with a plan to kill things, but you two just kill things by accident. Like a surprise ! Like a birthday present ! I could get used to this. Do you generally stick to invasions or is there the odd coup d'etat ?"

Rose and the Doctor look at one another.

"Sometimes we go to the beach," she suggests, helpfully. The Doctor puts his face in his hands.

"I'll still kill you both," the Master adds. "After tea. Sometime. In the future."

"After is good," Rose says.


End file.
